A Summer Morning In The Gardens

Each season I pay a visit to the Canadian Museum of Nature, to document the Landscapes Of Canada Gardens, on the west side of the property through the year. In July I returned for a summer visit one morning. I approached from the southwest, where Boreal Forest lies ahead.

The Gardens is divided up into four distinct ecosystems, with plants, flowers, grasses, and trees corresponding to them. Boreal Forest covers a large swath of the country, and some of the evergreens and other plant life of that area are found here.

Information on each ecosystem is to be found as well. Prairie Grasslands takes the grasses and flowers of that region of the West, and here in the summer, they grow tall quickly.

The path leads under a sculpture- an iceberg that was created by the late Canadian artist and inventor Bill Lishman.

Arctic Tundra is the next ecosystem, with the plants and grasses of the far north doing very well over an Ottawa summer.

These particularly caught my eye.

The last ecosystem is the Mammoth Steppe. Alongside the north flank of the path and concentrated behind a family of mammoths in sculptural form are plants and flowers that grew in the time of these animals, and still thrive today. 

And here are the mammoths. The glass lantern of the Museum contains a model of the Moon.

One last shot of them to close things out.